Nicolo Rizzuto knew how to make enemies

Montreal Gazette11.09.2010

Nicolo Rizzuto Sr. (left), who police consider the former Mafia godfather of Canada, arrives in Montreal court with his defence lawyer Loris CavaliËre and an unidentified man (right) Thursday February 11, 2010 in Montreal where he plead guilty to two counts of tax evasion, less than two weeks after the cha

MONTREAL - Nicolo Rizzuto, the 86-year-old patriarch of Montreal’s most notorious Mafia family, shot dead in his home in Ahuntsic Wednesday night, knew how to make enemies and influence people.

Born in Cattolica Eraclea, Sicily, on Feb. 18, 1924, Rizzuto moved his family, including his then 8-year-old son Vito, to Canada in 1954.

Rizzuto began his criminal career as a member of the Cotroni clan, which controlled a vast swathe of Montreal’s criminal drug trade in the 1970s.

But he antagonized other crime families in Montreal and New York by playing fast and lose with the rules of the Cosa Nostra.

During the 1970s, he was described as a thorn in the side of mob leaders like Vincenzo Cotroni and Paolo Violi because he repeatedly sidestepped them and appeared to refuse to acknowledge Violi’s status in the organization.

The conflict culminated in Violi’s slaying on Jan. 22, 1978. It was Violi’s killing that solidified the hegemony of the Rizzuto clan in Montreal.

While a few of his associates were charged in the Violi killing, Rizzuto took off for Venezuela, where he lived for years and is alleged to have co-ordinated major drug smuggling networks.

He returned to Montreal in 1993. By then, it was alleged, his son Vito had been the head of the Mafia in Montreal for years.

Nicolo Sr. and Vito both moved into palatial homes on Antoine Berthelet Ave. in the north end of Montreal, a neighbourhood that came to be known as “Mafia row,” as other family members followed suit.

It was on that street that the elderly patriarch was gunned down Wednesday night.

In November 2006, Nicolo Rizzuto was arrested in Project Colisée, the joint police investigation into organized crime, on charges of extortion, bookmaking, drug smuggling and drug exportation.

Despite being on probation after the 2006 arrest, Nicolo Rizzuto was present for the funeral of his grandson, Nick Rizzuto, Jr., in January 2010. The patriarch’s grandson had been shot dead in Notre Dame de Grâce in late December 2009 in the most prominent Mafia hit since the Violi rubout.

Since then, other killings and disappearances designed to weaken the once all-powerful Rizzuto organization have led to what legal experts describe as a power vacuum in organized crime in Montreal.

Vito Rizzuto is serving a 10-year sentence at a prison in Colorado for racketeering related to the murders of three men in 1981.